In 36 hours I’ll be asleep (I hope) but a mere 3 hours after that I’ll be winging my way to Gatwick ready for another week of that delight we call international business travel. For those of you who have to experience this, my commiserations, for those of you who get to stay home, you lucky bastards.

One of my previous jobs required a lot of foreign travel, mostly to Manhattan. That had a lot of perks (Ian Schraeger hotels, unlimited expenses) but even that paled in the end – mostly because my colleagues were such a bunch of unmitigated assholes. I did though once take my then girlfriend to Alison on Dominick where we racked up a charming little $350 which I then charged to the company. Happy days indeed. Actually apart from the idiot colleagues that was a pretty good year. I was going out with Kat who despite being a bit of a head case had a lot of good attributes - she was a Sergeant in the US Army on loan to Anderson’s so could usually make it to New York for the weekend whenever I was there. We’d just order a lot of room service roll around New York during the day and indulge in a lot of hotel sex. For a shag-tastic weekend the Paramount is good but the Hudson is the best. It has really good CD players in the rooms and for reasons which I can only ascribe to sheer perviness the bathroom walls are made of glass - you can lie in bed with eggs benedict and a scotch on the rocks listening to the Fun Loving Criminals and watch your lover showering. Mmmm mmmmm!

In fact if Kat hadn’t flipped out and had a commitment crisis I’d have stuck with the job longer, but when you’ve had all that going back to face another unbroken 3 week stint with the mean spirited dickwads of 12th and Park simply becomes unbearable.

It’s all different now of course – I’m firmly in the land of $48 per person/day allowances, car sharing and straight to bed after dinner – no extended bar rampages here :(